542 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 46. English Pale he found ' as it were overwhelmed with vagabonds ; stealth and spoils daily carried out of it ; the people miserable ; not two gentlemen in the whole of it able to lend twenty pounds ; without horse, armour, apparel, or victual.' ' The soldiers were worse than the people : so beggarlike as it would abhor a General to look on them.' ' Never a married wife among them/ and therefore ' so allied with Irish women/ that they betrayed secrets, and could not be trusted on dangerous service ; ' so insolent as to be in- tolerable ; so rooted in idleness as there was no hope by correction to amend them.' T So much for the four shires. ' In Minister/ as the fruit of the Ormond and Desmond wars, ' a man might ride twenty or thirty miles and find no houses stand- ing/ in a county which Sidney had known ' as well inhabited as many counties in England.' Connaught was quiet so far, and Clanrickard was probably loyal ; but he was weak and was in constant expectation of being overrun. I566 ' In Ulster/ Sidney wrote, ' there tyranniz- March. e fa ^he p r i nce of pride ; Lucifer was never more puffed up with pride and ambition than that O'Neil is ; he is at present the only strong and rich man in Ireland, and he is the dangerousest man and most like to bring the whole estate of this land to sub- version and subjugation either to him or to some foreign prince, that ever was in Ireland.' l
1 Sidney to Leicester, March 5 : Irish MSS. Rolls Hottsf.
